Assimp Plugin

Overview

The Assimp plugin (AssimpPlugin) is a plugin that makes Open Asset Import Library (Assimp), a library for loading 3D model files in various formats, available in Choreonoid. This makes it possible to load mesh files in formats such as Blender (.blend), DirectX (.x), and DXF (.dxf) as shape data of models.

Note that Choreonoid natively supports major mesh file formats such as STL, OBJ, glTF, and COLLADA (.dae). In particular, the COLLADA format used to require the Assimp plugin, but it is now natively supported in recent versions, so the Assimp plugin is needed less often than before. Use this plugin only when you want to use mesh files in the formats listed above.

How to Build

The Assimp support corresponds to the CMake option ENABLE_ASSIMP. In an environment where the Assimp library is installed, it is automatically detected in the CMake configuration and this option becomes ON by default.

On Ubuntu, the Assimp library can be installed with the following command (it is already installed if you are using the package installation script of Choreonoid).

sudo apt install libassimp-dev

To use Assimp on Windows, you need to build and install Assimp from source. For how to build Assimp, refer to the documentation of the Assimp repository. If the installation destination is “c:\local\assimp” or “c:\Program Files\Assimp”, it is automatically detected in the CMake configuration of Choreonoid. If you have installed it elsewhere, set the “lib\cmake\assimp-x.x” (x.x is the version number) directory under the Assimp installation destination to the CMake assimp_DIR variable.

How to Use

When this plugin is enabled, it becomes possible to load model files that use mesh files in the supported formats, and to load them directly as scene files. No special operation is required.